'Stars aligned' for Cyprus to unite, say Turks

By Peter Foster

London: The stars are "uniquely aligned" to resolve the partition of Cyprus, the Turkish-Cypriot foreign minister said as UN-backed talks begin with the aim of ending one of Europe's longest-running territorial disputes.

With Philip Hammond, the British Foreign Secretary, arriving in Cyprus on Thursday to lend British support to the negotiations, diplomats said that the island had its best chance in decades to end more than 50 years of conflict between the Greek and Turkish populations.

"There seems to be a win-win situation developing, an alignment of the stars," Emine Colak, the Northern Cypriot foreign affairs minister, said on Wednesday. ."The whole region has a lot to benefit from the unclogging of the Cyprus question, and I think both sides realise there is now a serious window of opportunity."

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Hopes for a deal to reunify Cyprus rose last April with the election of a new Turkish-Cypriot leader, Mustafa Akinci, who had campaigned on a peace platform.

Mr Akinci will this month hold six meetings with his Greek-Cypriot counterpart, Nicos Anastasiades, who was elected in 2013 but has long campaigned for a deal, even when it was unpopular with the Greek public.

Cyprus, a former British colony that gained independence in 1960, has been formally divided since the Turkish invasion of 1974. The last attempt to solve the dispute failed in 2004 after a deal brokered by Kofi Annan, the then-UN secretary general, was rejected by 74 per cent of the Greek population when put to a referendum. The Turkish north voted 65 per cent in favour.

However, diplomats close to the process say conditions are fertile for a new deal that would have a strong chance of being ratified by the Greek-Cypriot public. "We have leaders on both sides who are ready to make a deal and look to have developed personal trust and it looks as if they are making progress in key areas," said an official.

Other factors fuelling the optimism include the discovery in 2011 of the Aphrodite gas field off Cyprus which business groups on both sides of the partition are keen to develop.

The need to boost Cyprus's tourist economy, which was badly hit by the financial crisis and required EU bailouts, is also driving appetite for a deal, diplomats said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to visit Cyprus next month to lend US backing to the process, which is expected to gather momentum in the run-up to Christmas. The German, Russian and Chinese foreign ministers will also visit by the end of the year.

Under the terms of a putative agreement, Cyprus would become a unified federal state, with mechanisms to enable both sides to be represented in a single political system.

Among the biggest hurdles to any deal is the issue of property left behind on both sides in 1974, when 165,000 Greeks fled south and 45,000 Turks went north.

It is proposed that most of those who lost property in the conflict will be paid compensation from an international fund that will also finance new governance structures and provide security to the Turkish minority. Officials said that Britain would contribute.